Fibrous insulation material is typically manufactured in common lengths and widths, called insulation batts, to accommodate typical building frame structure dimensions. Fibrous insulation batts are commonly made of mineral fibers, such as glass fibers, and usually have a density within the range of from about 0.2 to about 1.0 pounds per cubic foot (3.2 to 16 kg/m3). Typical batt sizes are 16 or 24 inches (40.6 cm or 61.0 cm) wide by 8 to 10 feet (2.44 m) long. These batts can be packaged in various ways. The batts can be staggered and rolled together along their lengths so that a roll would contain about 10 batts.
Alternatively, in order to reduce storage and transportation costs, it is common practice to package insulation batts by compressing them and then providing them with a covering, for example, a bag, which maintains the batts in their compressed state. When the bag is subsequently removed at the point of utilization of the batts, the batts expand to their normal size.
In the past, the compression of the insulation batts has been achieved by stacking the batts in a compression chamber which has a fork for compressing the batts and a piston for discharging the compressed batts from the compression chamber into a bagging apparatus. The compressed batts are typically forced into the bag.
The insulation batts are delivered to the compression machine by an endless conveyor from a production line. To avoid interruption of the operation of the production line or an accumulation of uncompressed insulation batts, it is necessary to ensure that the insulation batts are promptly handled by the compression machine.
Normally, the insulation batts are manually collected from the conveyor belt into batches. Each batch comprises a stack of the batts, which are then manually loaded into the compression chamber. This collection process requires a considerable amount of manual handling of the insulation batts, which is uneconomical. At times, the batts expand during this packaging process, which causes further delays and sometimes damage to the batts.
Also, the compression machine itself sometimes causes damage to the batts. For example, top and bottom batts are damaged due to the shear motion between the adjacent batts and/or the batts' contact with the doors and snouts on the compression machine.
In other instances, the batts can be subjected to facing flange damage due to mechanical finger movements of the compression machine.
Another concern with currently available compression machines is that there is a loss of efficiency in the packaging process since the compression machines often must use a mechanical retracting motion which takes critical time in the overall packaging process.
It is, accordingly, an object of the present invention to provide a novel and improved apparatus for compressing and packaging compressible batts which, while entirely eliminating manual handling of the compressible batts, enables a larger number of the compressible batts to be included in one package.
The invention will be more readily understood from the following description of a preferred embodiment thereof given, by way of example, with reference to the accompanying drawings.